Honor Among Thieves
by schweigende
Summary: Everyone needs a hobby, and Harry's just happens to be bankrupting and exacting revenge on the rich and powerful. His latest job looks like it may be one of his most convoluted investigations yet. Fortunately, he has help.


Honor Among Thieves  
Chapter One  
Rating: M to be on the safe side, for language and possible violence (but mostly just a T)  
Disclaimer: Not mine.

Author's Notes:

While I was planning out the next few chapters in DASBA, I got a new plot bunny stuck in my head for a Harry Potter/ Leverage crossover. It was a lot of fun to write this chapter, but I don't know when I'll have time to continue it. If anyone wants to adopt it, just ask.

For anyone not familiar with Leverage, it's a TNT show about "an honest man leading a gang of thieves" in order to con/manipulate corrupt, rich people into either getting arrested or making amends (often monetary) to the people they hurt with their greed. Early on in the show, they manage to make a fortune off of stock in one of their scams. As a result, when their clients ask them how they can afford to take on such powerful enemies when the clients can't actually pay them, the team says they have an alternate revenue stream.

oOo

Harry Potter steeled himself and took a deep breath. His pre-battle nerves were making him edgy, and he felt ready to curse anyone who tried to surprise him. With a few barely perceptible motions, he checked his wand holster and his glamour. He patted his pocket to ensure a certain object was still there; even with all his precautions, if he lost that object, the whole plan might fall down the drain, and hundreds of lives might be lost.

Everything was in place. He was ready.

He took an extra minute to run through some meditation exercises to calm himself down. He'd spent six months preparing for this. Six months of his life ruthlessly digging through slums and minds for any clue about the whereabouts of the ruthless villain who could even now be waiting in the building in front of him. His target was perhaps one of the most evil beings alive, a depraved monster who had been at the center of all of Harry's thoughts for the six months.

With one last meditative breath, Harry forced his body to relax and walked confidently into the most frightening place he'd ever infiltrated… a muggle office building.

oOo

New York City

Phoenix Rising Medical Supplies, Corporate Headquarters

"Could you tell Mr. Donners that Charles Robertson is here for his 10:00 meeting?" Harry asked calmly. The secretary looked at him in surprise. Harry would have panicked at her dubious look, but he had meticulously researched every aspect of his current identity, from his sandy-blond hair to his Ivy League background.

"Of course, Mr. Robertson. Forgive me, but your assistant said that you weren't going to be able to make it today. She said that you were having car trouble." The secretary looked up at him with uncertain eyes.

Harry cursed to himself. He certainly hadn't made any such call. Who was interfering with his plan? Who even knew that there was a plan to interfere with? Perhaps he should find a way to call the whole thing off, delay it until he could figure out where the leak was.

No. He'd come to far. Any delay meant more people disappearing, more families grieving.

"The mechanic dealt with the matter," Harry said shortly.

The secretary nodded, still looking confused, and spoke quietly into her headset. A minute later, the wooden doors to the CEO's office opened and the man himself stepped into the entryway.

"Charles! What a pleasant surprise! And here I heard you weren't going to be able to make it," Sam Donners greeted him, smiling in a darkly satisfied manner that instantly had Harry's hackles rising.

He arched an eyebrow. "Rumors of my automotive difficulties appear to have been exaggerated," he said smoothly. Technically, there wasn't any automotive to have had troubles with; although Harry had a car service, he had apparated to an alley near the office today so that he would have plenty of time to monitor the building and note any unusual comings and goings.

"Well, I am very happy to hear that. And here is someone else I'm sure will be delighted to make your acquaintance. Charles Robertson, may I introduce you to Divya Ramanathan, CFO of Allbright Industries."

Donners' smile became more noticeably shark-like. "I'm afraid, Mr. Robertson, that you have some competition in these negotiations."

Fuck. Harry hadn't intended to actually negotiate. His "sample product" didn't even really function—at least he didn't think it functioned. Even after his half-year's worth of work, his knowledge of muggle medicine could fit inside a thimble. He'd been counting on the glamours and "Trust Me" credibility charms on the produce to carry his point and convince Donners to open up to him. He didn't need the actual contract, just enough private time with the man in question to mentally interrogate him.

Which he couldn't do with a muggle witness standing two feet away, especially without knowing if she were also guilty or not.

Harry snorted. She was guilty alright. Someone had canceled his appointment and allowed Ms. Ramanathan this opportunity. But was she guilty of standard corporate sabotage, which was a common practice in the muggles' cutthroat business world, or was she involved in something significantly… darker?

Only one way to find out.

He took the woman's hand gracefully and stared deeply into her eyes. "A pleasure to meet you. I … look forward… to doing business with you."

A quick brush across her surface thoughts seemed to confirm that she was Divya Ramanathan, that she had grown up in India but gone to university in Britain, that she had worked her way up the corporate ladder at Allbright, and that she was very, very unhappy that he was here. Everything about her identity was remarkably clear, right on the surface of her mind.

Too clear. Too perfectly defined to be anything but a fabrication. He could sense flashes of something else, a much deeper personality, behind her eyes, but he couldn't afford to delve deeply enough to find out what. Not without alerting his primary target.

"Likewise, I'm sure," Ms. Ramanathan smirked before dropping his hand as though he had some sort of infectious disease. She turned back to Donners, and Harry had to admire her poise. She was every bit as pissed off at the derailing of her true plans as he was, but he'd never know it to look at her.

Donners grinned in a way that had nothing to do with humor or kindness and everything to do with a predator faced with two helpless prey. "Shall we get down to business?"

Harry wondered if he could just curse both of them. Even if they weren't guilty of what he suspected, he'd be doing the world a favor. Business people—they were worse than lawyers!

oOo

Harry had been managing to hold his own in negotiations for about fifteen minutes, mainly by making extravagant promises without any clue whether or not they were feasible. Surprisingly, he had a notion that his newest lady-of-interest was playing the same game that he was. He wasn't sure if that made him like her more or trust her less. After all, his intentions weren't exactly benign here either.

Since defeating the Dark Lord Voldemort, Harry had discovered that he had something of a talent for intimidating corrupt politicians, businessmen, and other elitists who thought they were above justice. Even the most ruthless of wizarding criminals had a tendency to soil themselves upon seeing Harry grinning dangerously at them, green eyes glinting like an _avada kedavra_. After few happy minutes of "interviewing" them, the criminal in question was all too happy to donate the bulk of his fortune to any victims of his corruption or depravity, then quickly leave the country. Most were just grateful for the chance to live and were willing to take the complete loss of wealth and influence as a fair trade.

It was better than Voldemort and his Death Eaters had gotten, at any rate.

So within a surprisingly few years, England had become a much safer and happier place. According to Harry, at any rate. Hermione tended to give him disapproving lectures about being careful he didn't become what he was hunting, while Ron seemed to think the whole thing was a grand adventure; he loved begging Harry for "funny stories about the latest Malfoy-wannabe you scared shitless."

Harry could live with that. He respected Hermione's nagging (concerns), and making everything into an adventure story was sometimes the only way to deal with the all too horrific reality of what hobbies England's elite had become accustomed to indulging themselves with.

But lately, he'd been hearing persistent rumors about an influx of new werewolves, and yet none of the werewolves he knew had heard anything. Nobody had turned up missing in the Wizarding World, which was insular it was easy to track. But then Hermione had suggested he check the muggle missing persons reports. After all, muggles could become werewolves almost as easily as wizards and witches, and they would have even less idea how to deal with the affliction. New werewolves in the muggle world usually meant lots of overtime for Ministry obliviators.

It had been difficult to investigate, at first. Harry had spent some time in the muggle world hiding from the public's adoration during the overwhelming pandemonium following his final defeat of the Dark Wanker, but he certainly didn't have the skills to go digging through muggle police records or interviewing muggle relatives.

Fortunately, Hermione was not so hampered. Together, they had managed to find nearly fifty strange disappearances in the United Kingdom alone. All of those disappearances followed a "mugging" on the night of the full moon; the victims had recovered for a day in the hospital and then simply disappeared without ever reaching home.

What's worse, all of the victims were young, athletic, and physically attractive. Some of them were very young; the youngest, only twelve.

Harry had had a feeling something very evil was going on. The fact that none of these wolves turned up in the magical world was disturbing. With fifty new wolves, even if they were muggles, someone could be building a huge pack.

Or an army.

Or a third option, with disturbing hints of evidence pointing to a plan Harry desperately did not want to think about.

With the help of some friends, both old and new, he'd traced everything he could to try to find a common link between how each of the victims had been chosen; he'd tried to pinpoint where they'd ended up while recovering. For months, he'd found nothing. Then the smallest of things—a corporate credit card number on a muggle receipt found in an abandoned warehouse that a witness had supposedly seen one of the victims come out of following her disappearance.

It was a long shot. They had tracked down the credit card number and found that it belonged to a company called Silver Dragon Medical Supplies. Not coincidentally, that was the same muggle company whose headquarters Harry was now visiting under false pretences.

Harry had investigated the connection thoroughly before coming here in person, and everything he found made him more worried, even when it didn't seem there was anything to be suspicious of. The company's business, marketing medical innovations, seemed surprisingly clean and up-to-date on all government and financial regulations. Maybe Harry's experience in the Wizarding World had biased him, but that seemed very fishy to him. Add in the thoughts of a few low-level security grunts he'd caught leaving the building, and Harry was seriously worried.

He was sure there was a major cover-up going on, but he needed to manipulate Donners into thinking about it, so he could read the details from the man's mind. He also needed the man to trust him enough to take him on a tour of their "research" facilities. Unfortunately, Donners wasn't being cooperative, as he was far more focused on the alluring Ms. Ramanathan's promises of corporate miracles.

"… and although Mr. Robertson may make big _claims_ for his company, I think Allbright Industries' proven history of…." Ms. Ramanathan continued talking, detailing business ventures as though they were seduction schemes. Perhaps they were. Harry could easily see how she had been chosen for whatever her part was in this unfolding drama. She was beautiful, of indeterminate age, and could easily pass for anything from American Indian to actual Indian, as well as British or American, maybe even Italian.

Although with a face like that and legs like those, it wasn't her ancestry Donners was probably thinking about right now.

"… and our cutting-edge research into bionic nanotech is likely to revolutionize the industry…."

Shit, now Harry knew she was making words up. Bionic nanotech? Harry scowled. He'd never heard of anything like that. That was totally cheating. It was one thing to make up a complete fake identity or even a corporation for the sake of a mission. But making up a whole fake branch of science? That was as dirty as a Slytherin's quidditch moves.

Harry scowled some more. Maybe he should just say that his company was fucking magic, and see how they liked that.

Before Harry's temper could cause him to simultaneously wreck his entire mission and destroy the international statute of secrecy, an inconspicuous light on Donners' over-sized desk began flashing. Immediately, the man frowned and gestured at his guest to stop speaking.

"Cindy?" He spoke into his phone to his secretary. "Update, now."

He was silent for a minute, although his expression became progressively more murderous. His two guests sat on the edges of their seats. Harry glared at his competition. _Did you do this?_ He wanted to ask. _Are you responsible for whatever is going to screw up six-months and thousands of galleons worth of planning?_

She glared back. Perhaps she was wondering the same about him.

"Fuck!" Donners' shout of rage brought an abrupt end to their staring contest. "Fucking asshole wants to break into my company? Call security! Tell them to shoot whoever the hell it is in the fucking kneecaps if that's what it takes. But I want them alive, got it?"

Apparently, Donners' temper was as bad as Harry's.

Harry silently echoed Donners' cursing. A break-in meant increased suspicion, which would make legilimancy much more difficult, even with the credibility charms. And it would also mean calling in security and possibly the police, which meant more questions than he could really answer.

"Is this a bad time?" Harry asked calmly, not betraying his sudden increase in heartbeat.

"No, no. Just a minor problem. I'll go deal with it. You two, wait here. Cindy or someone will be in shortly to … bring you refreshments," Donners said as he stalked out the door. Harry snorted. Refreshments, right. It seemed like Donners wasn't quite idiot enough to leave two strangers alone in his office.

"Cindy, get security down to the labs pronto. I want complete statements from everyone in the building. And close down the exits! Nobody's getting out." Donners' angry voiced indicated he was moving to the elevator.

Harry was surprised when, as soon as the door was shut, Ms. Ramanathan (or whatever her real name was) stood up and quickly walked to the corner of the room, pushing a potted tree out of the way and pulling out a wall-panel. Behind the panel, Harry could see a safe.

"What the hell are you doing? And who are you, anyway?" Harry asked. He thought about grabbing her and forcing her to answer questions, but they'd only have a few seconds before the secretary finished calling security and came in to spy on them—that is, get them "refreshments." He wanted to know what was in that safe as much as 'Ms. Ramanathan' did.

Harry walked over to the door to keep an eye out and warn his impromptu partner-in-crime if anyone came. She glanced at him archly as she saw what he was doing. "I'd think that what _I'm_ doing is fairly obvious. What _you're_ doing is a little more open to interpretation. Now, all you need to do is warn me when anyone's coming and then keep your mouth shut. I'll get the files, and you can have a nice nest egg for retirement."

"I don't need your money. I'm coming with you until I can get a copy of those files." If he couldn't interview Donners, then at least he wouldn't leave empty-handed.

"Not an option. And everyone needs money." The safe clicked open, and the business woman/ spy/ safe cracker started rifling through its contents. "Just name the bank of your choice, and we'll have ten thousand dollars deposited into the account of your choice by tomorrow."

"You don't get it. I. Don't. Need. Money. But I do need to know what Donners is up to, and since that's apparently what you're trying to figure out as well, you're not getting rid of me until I get what I want." Since her back was turned, he took the opportunity to hit her with a powerful tracking charm. Whatever muggle techniques of evasion she knew, unless she had a wizard in her pocket, she wasn't going to be escaping him any time soon. He would get the answers he was looking for.

"How can you _not_ need money?" she asked absently, quickly taking digital photographs of every file in the safe. At least, that's what Harry assumed she was doing.

"I have… an alternate revenue stream," Harry said reluctantly. There was just no good way to explain how several Death Eaters' fortunes got mysteriously donated to his Gringotts vault hours before their arrests, even if there was a way to explain Gringotts to a muggle in the first place.

If he hadn't been watching closely, he wouldn't have seen it. But when he mentioned his alternate financial backing, she froze. Just for a minute, but she froze in what looked like panic and glanced at him through her bangs. She muttered something under her breath that was over before Harry could cast a hearing-enhancement charm.

"Well, good for you, ducky, but—"

"Shit, someone's coming! Get back!" Harry snapped quietly, hurrying back to his chair.

By the time he'd finished his sentence, the files were back, the safe was closed, and spy-lady was lounging comfortably in her chair as though she hadn't moved in the entire time.

A nervous intern poked his head around the door. "Ah, Cindy, that is, Mr. Donners' personal assistant, asked me to look in on you. Ah, to see if there was anything you needed."

Harry was about to snap at the guy to bugger off, subtlety be damned, when he heard the spy-lady start gasping and making choking noises. He looked at her and saw her glaring at him through her bangs again. A quick dip into her brain lent him both the outline and the vocabulary for a plan.

"Thank god you're here! Quick, something's wrong with her! She's been having trouble breathing and I think it's getting worse!" Harry shouted as though panicked. He knelt by spy-lady's chair and held her wrist. He wasn't sure why, but people were always holding his hand in the hospital wing, and he'd seen the actors on the telly do this when they were playing doctors.

He turned to the frozen intern. "Are you a doctor? Well?"

"Uh, no, I mean, I'm just an intern. Actually, I majored in social psychological aspects of marketing. Uh, is she going to be okay?"

Harry turned the full force of his I-Will-Hunt-You-Down-Like-the-Death-Eater-Scum-You-Are glare at the quaking intern. "Does it look like she's okay? She's going into shock. It's clearly some time of allergic reaction, and unless you get your act together, _right now_, she's going to die on this very carpet while you stand there doing _absolutely nothing_ to help!"

Spy-lady helpfully went into convulsions, and Harry gave a fake sob. The intern was shaking and stuttering desperately, "I'll get a doctor! Right away! I just have to –"

"There's no time for that! You should have done that before, while you were standing around gawking. Now, she'll be dead or comatose by the time your precious doctor gets here," Harry dropped his voice to a grim whisper. "Her heart rate is dropping. I can feel it fading in and out as we speak."

"Wh- What d-do I do? Please, just tell me! What?"

"Do you have a first aid kit? With emergency treatments for allergic reactions?"

"Yes, there's one on each floor. I'm not sure where it is on this floor, but I'll find it. I'm sure it's got an epi-pen in it!" The intern paused and looked at Spy-lady who was doing a credible job of moaning and gasping.

"Of course it has an epi-pen in it!" Harry bellowed, despite having no clue what an epi-pen was. "Now, go! Hurry!"

The intern dashed off and Spy-lady stopped her contortions. When Harry looked back at her, he was surprised to see a small grin and an appraising look on her face.

"Not bad," she said. "For an amateur."

Harry rolled his eyes. "If you're done playing drama queen, shall we?"

He gestured to the door, and they both slipped out. By silent consensus, they avoided the elevator and headed toward the stairs. Halfway there, they had to duck into a plant nook when a large party of security guards came bursting through the doors. The man in front began snapping orders for them to secure each office until the breach was contained.

Harry cursed. Spy-lady cursed too. Harry thought he was better at cursing than she was and made a mental note to give her some pointers in the future. Preferably when they weren't about to have their kneecaps blown off by over-zealous private guards.

Harry ran through different scenarios in his head with the calm efficiency of a man who has gotten himself into and out of trouble since before he could actually spell the word 'trouble.' Option one, he could, just apparate, but then she'd be stuck and he'd never get to find out what was in those files. Option two, he could stupefy her, disillusion both of them, and escape. But he didn't know how to operate her camera, and he didn't want to kidnap a potential spy. That would be bad.

Option three, he could use magic to try to sneak them past the guards. Except that the guards all had headsets they were using to check in with a centralized security point. Harry knew from his prep-work that the building had security cameras in all the stairwells and high-security points, although the nook they were in now was fortunately a blind spot. As soon as they moved, the cameras would see them, and it wouldn't take long for the guards to start shooting even if the two escapees weren't technically visible to the naked eye.

He looked at Spy-lady. She was biting her lip. He sighed. "Do you trust me?"

She looked at him.

"I'm not joking," he said impatiently. "Look, I can get us past the guards without them noticing, but I don't have any way to avoid the cameras or pass the digital key pads without attracting a lot of attention."

"I may be able to help with that." She spoke slowly, and then cocked her head to the side as though listening to something he couldn't hear. "Yes, we can—I mean, I can disable the cameras and get the security codes for the keypads. But I don't see how you're going to get us past ten human guards standing not fifteen feet away."

He rolled his eyes. "And I don't see how you, by yourself, are going to disable the cameras in the central security office while simultaneously sneaking down the stairs with me and hacking their key pads for security codes."

She bit her lip (again), and he glared at her (again). Then he added, "But I won't ask awkward questions if you don't. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

"Then here we go. Let me know when the cameras are fixed. We'll head down the stairway until we get to the second floor. If I'm remembering right, we can cut over to the maintenance elevator shaft, drop down to the ground floor, and get out the back entrance."

She shook her head. "The maintenance elevators will be the first place they'll look for someone trying to sneak out. We're better off if we take the stairs down a few floors to the lower level employee cubicles. Then we'll get the codes and try to pass ourselves off as employees. We can take the regular elevator down to the third floor…"

"… which has an almost unused walkway that connects to the parking garage, which we can either exit onto the street from, or steal a car from." Harry concluded. It was a good plan. The parking garage had separate security, who probably weren't tied in to the central office, and there were a lot more blind spots there than in the office. Clearly, spy-lady had more experience with this subtlety thing than he did.

Subtlety really wasn't his style.

She looked at him. "Steal a car? Jump down elevator shafts? Who do you think you are, anyway—James Bond?"

He grinned. At least she'd got the country of origin right, not that that was a challenge. "I'll tell you my name if you tell me yours."

She snorted in apparent disgust, but he thought he saw a small smile when she turned away. Suddenly, she touched her ear. "Alright, the cameras for our route are showing false images to security. We're clear to go, if you can get us past these guys."

"No problem." Harry smirked. He was actually enjoying this, and his enjoyment increased as he saw the frantic intern from earlier dart into the men's room in search of the first aid kit he still hadn't found. Several security guards chased after the intern, who appeared not to hear them in his panic.

Harry grinned. He was an evil person. Turning so that his back was to his companion, he cast quick notice-me-not charms on each of them and then aimed his wand toward the bathroom. He locked the door and then used a decoy spell to make a firecracker burst inside the locked room. Sure enough, the guards near Spy-lady and him all took several steps toward the bathroom. A few of them actually ran over to help.

Leaving the path to the stairs relatively clear.

Harry slid his wand back into its holster and grabbed spy-lady's arm.

"Let's get out of here, shall we?"

oOo

After that, their daring escape was almost anti-climactic. They inched their way past the guards, Spy-lady entered the code for the stairs, and then the hardest part was pretending they were ordinary employees. Fortunately, Spy-lady came through on the elevators and managed to get one moving despite the security lock down. They were able to exit onto the third floor without attracting attention, although part of that was Harry's quick spellwork in hiding and silencing the elevator as it opened. Even if a guard had been standing right in front of the elevator instead of halfway down the corridor, he wouldn't have noticed anything afoot.

Ten minutes later, they finally reached the parking garage, and paused before going their separate ways.

"Now, we just need to arrange a way to meet up so that I can see what was in that safe." Harry leveled his best glare at her, and she had the grace to look intimidated.

"Yeah, about that…." She trailed off.

Harry had the briefest moment to think that he wasn't going to put up with whatever crap excuse came out of her mouth. Then her eyes widened and she gave a small shriek, while staring over his shoulder. Before Harry could decide whether to call her bluff or turn around, he felt a sharp pain on the back of his head, and the world went black.

oOo

Comments, questions, and constructive criticism welcome.


End file.
